The Call to Build Community
I had a fascinating and fruitful conversation yesterday with Roz Deiterich, an ID reader and occasional commenter, about our experiences of Christian community in anticipation of our Building Intentional Community Day at the end of this month.
Roz raised an excellent question: are some among us specifically gifted by God to give themselves to nurturing a kind of Christian community that is centered around mutual discipleship? Do some of us have a call to facilitate the "pursuit of God in the company of friends?"
As I thought over my own limited experience of transforming Christian community and of course, all that we've learned from helping tens of thousands of Catholics discern their charisms - I had to say "yes! absolutely!
And I thought back on all the people I had know who had felt such a call and how each call to foster Christian community had looked so different in practice but all had born enormous fruit in the lives of other people.
But in the absence of a compelling vision for what real Christian community can do: draw the unbelieving and unchurched, foster life-long discipleship, spiritual growth, discernment of gifts and vocations, and extraordinary apostolates, how many of us hear the call? How many of us recognize that we may have charisms of pastoring or hospitality or leadership in this area? How many of us grasp what is at stake?
What's been your best experience of Christian community, large or small? An experience of community that fostered your lived relationship with Christ? How did it change your life?
posted by Sherry W @ 10:19 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
When my parents were in their late 20s they felt the call to leave Washington DC to join a lay covenant community called Lamb of God in the Baltimore area.
Many families, Protestant and Catholic, moved into an area on the West of Baltimore - in a slightly run down section - and before you knew it there were 40-50 community families in the area (intermingled with lots of non-community people of course).
Growing up in this community was a wonderful blessing for myself. It was like all these people were brothers and sisters and the parents were all parents to me. Its actually amazing the amount of people whom I have a deep connection with from these days of community - where I share a deep bond with in Christ.
Community life was very vibrant for a long time - and it attracted up to 500 families - whom a large percentage were significantly involved in the community as well as their individual churches. It was a wonderful source of evangelization and tons of ministry.
Though much smaller and less intense than it used to be - there is still a lot of informal community and friendships in Christ - that are vital in sustaining our lives as Christians.
A very good experience of community!
I now work full-time in ministry for a lay apostolate, ChristLife, who is beginning to see the need to foster a "missionary community" to some degree - to foster true evangelization and discipleship on a regional scale (for now Archdiocese of Baltimore) - we are still very much on the front end of developing this - and trying to listen to the Lord and to the Church - so that our experience of community and "movement" will ecclesiologically jive with the institutional church.
Pete:
What a great story! Thanks for sharing it.
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